Twenty-first Sunday after PentecostDeuteronomy 34:1-12Matthew 22:34-46
When I first read the texts for this week, I began salivating at the opportunity to hit on all cylinders of my social justice values, liberation theologies, and “preferential option for the poor” interpretations. So I was gleefully typing away at my manifesto when suddenly this week’s text from Leviticus stopped me cold. Particularly verse 15 where it says, “you shall not be partial to the poor.” In that moment I had to stop and wrestle, once again, with who I claim God to be. Read more

Our lectionary readings for this week take us to the heart of our anxiety for control, power, and security. From Haggai’s assurances that the glory of Israel was never in the accomplishments of her rulers but in the LORD and his inscrutable ways, to Paul’s comforting words to the people of Thessalonica, to Jesus’s re-orientation of the Sadducees’ question about marriage in the resurrection—these passages simultaneously challenge and assure the Christian, especially the Christian in the midst of personal, social, and/or political turmoil.

Above all, in these passages, we are challenged to become a people of Life, of the Living God. We are assured, having become a people so conformed to the exuberant and abounding Life of the Lord, that we will not only share in that Life in the resurrection, but that even our present works bear the marks of that Life. With this in mind I will focus my reflection on Jesus’ emerging theology of resurrection in chapter 20 of Luke’s gospel.

Now he is God not of the dead, but of the living; for to him all of them are alive.